Tribune Tower

If you thought spending federal money to study shrimp running on an underwater treadmill was a stupid waste of your tax dollars, think again. Outgoing Sen. Tom Coburn, the physician and Oklahoma Republican, has outdone himself in his yearly search of stupid wasteful spending for his famed "Wastebook." Included in this year's "Wastebook": You paid for a grant to watch grass grow in Florida, another to teach college students how to laugh and for a cultural exchange program involving nose flutists, who play music with their nostrils and nothing else. And you paid $3 million for a State Department program to humiliate terrorists with angry tweets. You also paid...

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This column was first published in Oct. 16, 2005
Philip Seymour Hoffman knows the voice well, the one any actor hears in his head sometimes after performing a scene onstage or on a movie set. It's the voice that murmurs: You're doing it...